The National Child Development Study, a longitudinal study of 16,000 British children, examines factors that may influence the relationship between a child's speech problem, scholastic attainment, and syntactic maturity. Effects of (1) teacher's rating of poor speech, (2) doctor's assessment of defective articulation, and (3) number of words…

An examination of the extent to which scores on the Stuttering Severity Instrument (SSI) for Children and Adults, Third Edition, accurately reflect 10 judges' observations of stuttering behaviors found that SSI scores obscured the wide range of judges' raw counts and did not accurately reflect the observational data from which they were derived.…

Thirty-six elementary school students repeated short meaningful, long meaningful, and long nonce utterances in response to a visual cue. Nonstuttering, stuttering only, and stuttering-plus (concomitant speech and/or language problems) children responded differently to utterance length and meaningfulness. Results suggest that the three groups may…

Features of mothers' and fathers' interaction with children who stutter are reviewed, along with results of intervention studies that have included children who stutter and their parents. Similarities and differences in the roles played by fathers and mothers in children's communicative development are discussed, as are implications for clinical…

This study sought to identify patterns of impaired acoustic laryngeal reaction time as a function of response complexity parallel to metabolic measures of brain function. Findings indicated that the disruption in speech motor control for 16 adult male developmental stutterers was systematically related to metabolic asymmetry in left superior and…

A parent-conducted program of verbal response-contingent stimulation was effectively used to reduce stuttering to near zero levels in 12 children (younger than age 5). Treatments were completed in a median of 10.5 1-hour clinic sessions and 84.5 days. (Author/DB)

A questionnaire asking respondents to list adjectives describing 4 hypothetical stutterers (2 8 year olds and 2 adults) was completed by 103 elementary and secondary teachers. The majority of reported adjectives were negative stereotypical personality traits, indicating perceptions of stutterers similar to other groups including speech-language…

Speech-associated attitudes of 70 stuttering and 271 nonstuttering Belgian elementary and middle school children were assessed. Stuttering students evidenced significantly more negative attitudes toward speech than did their nonstuttering peers. These attitudes became more negative with age among stuttering children, whereas attitudes of…

A study tested the differences between eight children (ages 6 through 11) who stutter and typical children on measures of narrative complexity and cohesion use in two narrative tasks and in stuttering frequency produced across tasks. No significant differences were found on measures of narrative complexity or cohesion use. (Author/CR)

A four-year study of 84 preschool children (25 to 59 months) who stutter found a continuous diminution in the frequency and severity of stuttering over time as many children progressed toward recovery. Findings indicate a 74% overall recovery rate for stuttering and a 26% persistency rate. (CR)

Ten speech-language pathology students judged five-second audiovisually recorded speech intervals as stuttered or nonstuttered in group and single-subject experiments. Results showed that judgment accuracy tended to increase after training, both for speakers used during the training process and unfamiliar speakers. Slight increases in interjudge…

A panel of speech professionals was randomly presented with speech samples from four neurogenic and four developmental stutterers and was asked to classify them accordingly without any patient knowledge. Results support the view that, based on the patient's verbal output only, it is difficult to distinguish between neurogenic and developmental…

Simplified regulated breathing (SRB) has been demonstrated to reduce or eliminate stuttering in children. However, much of the current research has evaluated the intervention with school-aged children within educational contexts. In the current case report, we extended the application of SRB by evaluating its effectiveness in treating stuttering…

The purpose of this study was to assess the effect of phonological neighborhood density on the speech reaction time (SRT) and errors of children who do and do not stutter during a picture-naming task. Participants were nine 3-5-year-old children who stutter (CWS) matched in age and gender to nine children who do not stutter (CWNS). Initial…

In light of emerging findings concerning untreated recovery and neural plasticity, this paper re-examines the viability of an NIH conference recommendation [Cooper, J. A. (1990). Research directions in stuttering: Consensus and conflict. In Cooper, J. A. (Ed.), "Research needs in stuttering: Roadblocks and future directions" (pp. 98-100).…